


we'll cast some light and you'll be alright

by Care



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Roadtrips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Care/pseuds/Care
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max and Chloe drive down the Californian coast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll cast some light and you'll be alright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RunnerFive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunnerFive/gifts).



> While this fic can be read as shippy, it doesn't have to necessarily be. Just about two friends healing in the aftermath of something terrible.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

The morning after the storm, the sky over Arcadia Bay is a clear blue. The clearest blue Max has ever seen, pure and clean. She stands outside and breathes it in, the sharp salt tang of the sea, the faint smoke of debris, and her heart clenches and tightens over and over again in a way that Max knows it's there to stay. She sees Chloe's blue hair out of the corner of her eye and Max turns to see her, clutching her car keys, her mouth a thin line pressed against emotion.

"I think we should go," Chloe says, nodding towards her miraculously unscathed pick-up.

Max takes another deep breath, this Arcadia Bay air. She's not sure she'll ever see it again. "Okay," she says. "Okay."

 

*

 

They follow the winding road out of town. It's slow going, the path littered with the remnants of fallen buildings. Max can't think about it too much, the people that she's leaving behind. She can't think about whether they're alive or dead — Kate, in the hospital. Joyce, at the Two Whales. Even Victoria. Is Victoria dead? Did Max save her in the end? Max can no longer tell one reality from the other. It blurs together in the swirls of time, dissolving into the edges of her vision.

Chloe reaches across the gearshift for Max's hand and Max offers it, palm up. Chloe's grip is warm and tight. It doesn't feel like it's only been a week. It's been so much longer than that, so many lives lived. Max squeezes Chloe's fingers, interlaced through her own. They're leaving now. They're gone.

 

*

 

Trees rush by in a blur. Max watches with her forehead pressed against the window, sunlight warming the glass. Chloe's driving just a little too fast, her movements oddly jerky. She seemed like she was fine this morning. Maybe Max did too. Maybe that's how it'll be — they'll both seem fine for a while. Until they're not. Neither of them have said a word since they left Arcadia Bay's city limits.

Max wonders if she can still change time, bend it, rewind. She may have lost the ability in the storm. She flexes her hand in front of her face, squints at it as she curls her fingers in towards her palm. Her skin feels strange today. The world feels strange. Like she isn't quite in the right body.

"Can you still...?" Chloe trails off, as if she's afraid to ask.

Max shrugs, turns back to the window. "I'm not sure."

Chloe puts on her blinker and pulls the truck over to the side of the road. She turns off the engine. It's very quiet without the rumble of the truck beneath them, and Max can hear Chloe breathing, unsteady and soft. The sound fills the cab, the empty space between them.

"Do you," Chloe starts to say, her voice very quiet and so unlike her. "Do you regret doing what you — "

"No," Max says, turning to her, almost violently. " _No_. Stop. Chloe — I — I'm not saying it was an easy choice, but no. I don't. Please don't think I do."

Chloe doesn't say anything. She stares out the pitted windshield, at a copse of swaying trees in the distance. "Where do you want to go, Super Max?" she says, sounding more like herself. "We can go anywhere."

"I want to go anywhere," Max tells her, sure and steady. "I'm ready."

 

*

 

They drive south, turning inland. Chloe ignores the speed limits, and the truck rattles along the road, taking curves too fast. Max thinks she should tell Chloe to slow down, but there's something exciting about it too, the wind whipping her hair around her face, the very determined expression on Chloe's face. They turn the radio all the way up, blaring music so loud that Max thinks it echoes through the forest around them.

Chloe pulls into a gas station and fills up the truck, leaning her back against the side of the bed. Max scrambles out to pee in the dingy little bathroom behind the pumps. She takes the key from the bored kid manning the cash register — he's got a face full of acne scars and doesn't look up from his phone screen — and locks herself into the single-stall room. The tiled floor is grimy with muddy footprints and pieces of toilet paper. Max stares at herself in the cracked mirror, washes her face from the shockingly cold tap. She wonders if she'll see another blue butterfly.

Enough of that, she thinks. It's time to be present.

Back in the truck, Max opens a bag of chips. She passes handfuls to Chloe, crumbs dusting their hands and mouths.

"This is how you road trip," Chloe says, laughing, and steps on the gas.

 

*

 

That night they share a motel room. Chloe rolls over in her bed and goes still. Max stares at the shadowed form of her beneath the sheets. She wants to trace the line of Chloe's spine, run her finger along the ridges of each vertebrae, feel the rise and fall of Chloe's steady breath. There's something so comforting about Chloe being alive, something so nice that Max almost wants to reassure herself. She's here and it's okay and Max _saved_ her.

Max has never saved anything, but Chloe — over and over this week, she's saved Chloe. There wasn't really a choice. It's the only path Max knows. And maybe that makes her selfish, but — fuck it. Fuck it all. Max pulls a pillow over her head and away from Chloe. The sheets smell like mildew and soap.

She's made her choices.

 

*

 

Chloe wants to commemorate reaching the California border. They get out out of the truck and pose for a selfie beneath the sign, Chloe with her arm slung around Max's shoulders. The click and whirr of the Polaroid camera is reassuring, a comforting hug from a friend. Max shakes the picture, watching the image change and darken on the photo paper between her fingers. Chloe sticks it on the dashboard.

"To remember," she says.

"I won't forget," Max says.

Chloe smiles. "I won't either."

 

*

 

They drive right through San Francisco.

Max doesn't want to stop. It's hard enough to remember what did and didn't happen without adding to it. She can still hold the art gallery in her mind, the swooping sensation in the pit of her stomach that was a mixture of joy and nerves as she saw her own photograph on the wall. She wants to remember it as it is.

"Are you sure?" Chloe asks. "Because we can — "

"I'm sure," Max says quickly because suddenly her pulse is going very fast. "I want you to drive."

Chloe gives her a two-finger salute and turns away from the city.

 

*

 

The California coast is so very beautiful and so very different. Max is used to the beauty of the Pacific Northwest — all forests and gray skies — and California is bright sun across the crashing surf. Chloe eases them along the PCH, no longer so cavalier as before. Maybe they both needed this change of pace. Max laughs, pointing out the window, at circling seagulls high above them.

The way the sunlight skips across the dashboard is different from anything Max has ever seen.

 

*

 

"Hey," Max says, pointing at a sign. "Los Angeles. 150 miles."

Chloe's face brightens. Like a sign she's been waiting for. "Okay, Super Max," she says. "Okay."

 

*

 

"Rachel would've liked this."

They sit on the cool Venice Beach sand, watching the waves roll in. The sun is setting, casting bright copper light across them. Behind them, Max can hear the sounds of the boardwalk — and far along the shore, there's the Santa Monica Pier, jutting out into the ocean. The same ocean she used to stand out and look at in Arcadia Bay.

Chloe closes her eyes, resting her chin on top of her knees. "No, Rachel would've _loved_ this," she corrects herself.

But Max can't see Rachel Amber anymore. She can only see Chloe, in that black jacket of hers, strands of her blue hair falling across her features.

"I'm glad you're here, Max," Chloe says, looking straight at her. "I -- I can't imagine anyone else I'd rather have with me right now."

At her side, Max flexes her hand against the sand. She hopes it's gone for good. "I'm glad I'm here too," she says. I'm glad I'm anywhere with you."


End file.
